‘My Roddy?’ She smiled across at him. ‘Well, he was calm. He was gentle. He was the same on a Thursday as he was on the Monday. I don’t think you could say that about many people. Like many men concerned with money, so the bank manager told me when Jude and I were in danger of falling into debt, he was very good with other people’s money and no good at all with his own. He was always complaining about being about to run out of cash, his salary for that month all gone and so forth. He was very generous to me, always buying me presents. He was always careful only to come when the children would be out or at school, in case they said something to their father.’ She paused. ‘I don’t think that’s all there was to him,’ she said sadly. ‘He wasn’t eloquent, he wasn’t funny, but he was very gentle and very kind.’
She stopped once more and Powerscourt felt she was very close to tears now.
‘Thank you so much,’ he said, rising out of his chair by the other side of the fire. ‘I’ve taken up enough of your time. You’ve been most helpful. Could I just ask, if you think of anything else that might help, please get in touch. The school will know where to find me.’
Hilda Mitchell showed him to the door. ‘Even if I do,’ she said very softly, ‘think of something, I mean, it’s not going to bring him back. Nothing’s going to bring him back now, is it, Lord Powerscourt? I shall never see Roddy again.’
4
It was the largest force Inspector Fletcher had ever commanded. It wasn’t a regiment or a battalion or even a company. His unit this January morning, he thought, remembering the books on military history he loved as a boy, was somewhere between a squad and a platoon. Apart from himself and his sergeant, he had eighteen men on parade outside the Jesus Hospital in Marlow. Three police stations in Maidenhead had been denuded of some of their officers to provide the manpower. Manoeuvres were to start shortly after eight o’clock when the last silkman had left his quarters and reported for breakfast in the dining hall.
As the clock above the little tower reached eight o’clock, the sergeant, on duty by the dining hall, waved an unobtrusive arm to his superior officer. The old men were all sitting down. The eighteen policemen marched into the almshouse. Each one had been assigned a particular room and the sergeant had one of his own. All had been briefed half an hour before at a specially convened assembly in the Maidenhead police station. They were searching, the Inspector informed them, for the murder weapon which had cut the dead man’s throat, and the strange instrument which might have made the marks on his chest. Inspector Fletcher had wondered long and hard about whether he should tell his little force about the stigmata, as he now referred to them. Eventually he decided that he had no choice. If his men didn’t know what they were looking for, how could they possibly find it? He swore the police constables to secrecy on this matter, assuring them that whoever mentioned a word about it, even to their own families, would have all his holiday entitlement cancelled for the foreseeable future. And they were also looking for papers, any private papers they could find. These, he told them, might be letters from family or friends, papers relating to their previous lives, wills, any memorabilia that might say where they had been and what they had done in earlier times. Each officer had a folder with the number of the room he was assigned to inscribed in large black letters. Inspector Fletcher had had enough of the confused memories of the over-seventies. Evidence, hard evidence was what he needed.
The old men were having a treat this morning. Fried eggs and bacon happened to be on the menu, a rare combination. This always improved morale. As they tucked into their portions, sauce bottles at the ready, the policemen slipped into their rooms and began the search. They pulled open the drawers, they checked the small cupboards, they emptied the pockets of any jackets left on a hanger, they knocked on the walls in the quest for hidden compartments and they checked underneath the threadbare carpets for any loose floorboards that might mask a treasure trove of hidden weaponry. They shook any books they could find to see if any documents were being concealed in the pages. They inspected the pictures on the walls and any photographs they could find, just as the Inspector had told them, taking the pictures out of the frames to see what might be lurking behind. They checked the stairs that led to the upper floors. Some of the folders filled up quickly. Others were less profitable, with only a couple of items being removed.
The Inspector reckoned that the time required to eat breakfast, even with the luxury of fried eggs and bacon, might not be enough for his purpose. The chaplain, also the curate of St Michael and All Angels in Marlow, had been pressed into the police service for the day. All the old men were to make their way to the chapel immediately after breakfast. Going back to their rooms was not allowed. They were to attend a special service for the feast day of St Thomas Aquinas which fell on the following day. The curate had preached on this subject before, having made a special study of the late St Thomas Aquinas and his theology at university. He was to preach until the sergeant opened the main door and nodded to him. At that point the silkmen were to sing a final hymn,
‘For all the saints who from their labours rest’. This, the chaplain assured the Inspector, had no fewer than eleven verses and if sung at a funereal pace as dictated by the organist of St Luke’s on the hospital piano, should last between five and ten minutes, ample time for his policemen to pick up their belongings and beat an orderly retreat.
The Inspector paced anxiously round the quadrangle. His sergeant conducted spot checks on the officers, ensuring that they were obeying orders. Eventually the sergeant blew on his whistle after the third verse and the eighteen policemen from Maidenhead were marched out of the hospital to carry their booty back to the station. It was just before half past nine. The Inspector had told nobody, not Monk, not any of the old men, about this morning’s exercise. He stayed behind to reassure the silkmen that their sacrifice was only temporary and that their possessions would be returned to them in due course. He did not specify, and the men did not think to ask, how long that might be. As recompense, he assured them, the police would be buying drinks for everybody at the Rose and Crown that evening between the hours of eight and nine. By eleven that morning Inspector Fletcher was back in his office. The spoils of war were laid out on his floor in numerical order from Number One to Number Twenty. Albert Fletcher hung his jacket behind his chair and set to work.
One hundred and fifty miles to the north-east the other Inspector in Powerscourt’s life was really rather pleased with himself. The two men were standing on the edge of the playing fields where the snowman was being erected. Grime refused to go back to the geography classroom if he could avoid it. He refused to talk anywhere in the school where small boys who ran as if in training for the next Olympic Games in Stockholm in two years’ time might appear round a corner at any minute and hear things they were not meant to know. The snowman, Powerscourt observed, was now higher than most of the junior members of the school. They had built small towers in the manner of building workers with their scaffolding and were adding to the figure with a selection of stolen shovels. The lake, one small boy had told Powerscourt solemnly, was not yet ready for skating. Pemberton Minor of the Upper Fourth had ventured across its frozen surface only for the ice to open and swallow him up. But for the timely intervention of a couple of gardeners, there would have been a great sadness in the Pemberton household. The soaked victim was now wrapped up in bed in the infirmary with a couple of hot water bottles for company.